Sunday, January 31, 2016

Apple is going nuts in start-up acquisitions, but it is horrible to actually work for them. That's why they pay these 'aqui-hires' many times more to stay with the company. They can buy the company but nobody actually has to go work for them.

Naturally, this may cause friction with the regular employees who get all the 'company town' perks, because the cost of living is so tremendous that a new hire has to live in his truck. So the aqui-hires are not allowed to talk about their tremendous deal. You never hear about it.

Naturally, anybody with a clue is doing a start-up and hoping to get bought. :)

Saturday, January 30, 2016

These are the big subduction zones of the world. Here, an M7 is like a 4 to us. A clean, gently curving zone probably means a 9+ every 800 years or so, just like Japan. This is at a weird corner, with the upper zone very curved. Thus, that lower zone could probably get a 9.2 or 9.3 (two to three times longer than a 9), but the upper zone is probably limited to 8's. The zone straightens out towards Alaska and we know that can cough up 9's.

Anyway, this only matters for tsunamis, since they are in the middle of nowhere, and the ground motion saturates at 8 or so. A big one on the lower zone beams right at the NA west coast, but you would get hours of warning. Might even be long enough to evacuate some of the coasts. :) But this earthquake gives no indication as to future events, it's just cute. :)

There is a neat movie, and the plot is velocity showing standing waves at each time step. If you ran the whole thing, you would get PGV which should line up with Intensity. This is great work! I love it!

pps. I hope he gets some readings. The Polaris northern stations take a holiday in January when it goes to 40 below and there is no sunshine. Bad for solar cells. We need 'Martian' nuclear batteries, which can also double up as footwarmers. :)

Friday, January 29, 2016

Hey, they're a billion in the hole, but 1.4 mill is going to study earthquakes. That's US dollars!

All the existing seismologists have a big footprint on their rears and left the building, mainly because it was going to fall down on their heads. :) The best people in OK are working on it, and they are moving 'beyond merely recording' to a brave new world.

Here's the job ad.

Wanted Dead or Alive

One earthquake person who is not a seismologist to work with the stupidest people alive, and make them look smart. This person must find a way to stop the earthquakes without costing the oil companies a cent, since oil is worth next to nothing. And they must show that the oil companies were right all along that they had nothing to do with the earthquakes, for the lawsuits.

Preference is giving to those that take the Bible literally, and do not go for that guff about the Earth being more than 4,000 years old. After all, oil is the stuff left over from the Flood.

Thursday, January 28, 2016

What, they aren't replacing the steam generators? They're shot to crap. The whole thing about the 'water laser' was that it destroyed everything. This is the same as the Niagara Tunnel to Nowhere. "Let's leave out improving the pumped storage, too much money." Now they are replacing pressure tubes to nowhere.

He makes some choice sound bites. Won't repeat them here. Anyway, I'm not getting depressed over this, it's only money. Have fun!

** water laser - The fact that those horrible pressure tubes start 'lasing' under the high flows needed to have the rated capacity. By changing a 5 vane pump to 7 they reduced the horrendous stresses (welding the pressure tubes to each other and shattering them), to just horrible (fatigue). I wrote something about this.

ps. They probably ran the numbers through focus groups to check the 'optics', just like the tunnel. They don't want to wake up the sleepy Ontario voters. 14 billion sounds good, people will think they get a whole new plant for that, and that's the cost. The true cost of 25 bills will never fly, you could get 2 new plants for that. So now they will pump the output of virile new tubes, into the 'old lady' steam generators and they will instantly die of apoplexy. Hey, we need new steam generators! :)

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

As I have said I am giving up my 'phone' part of the cell phone and going pure data pipe. Who needs conventional calling? But I have Googs 2 factor auth to my cell number as an SMS text. Got to get rid of that. Thank goodness G has an 'authenticator app'.

But the problem is that I found it impossible to figure out. When you install it, it says to scan this barcode with your phone. Hey, it's on the screen of my phone! What the heck?

After many conceptual struggles, I turned off 2 factor on the main computer. Then I started it again. When I said I would use the app, it presented the qr code on my computer screen. Aha! You also need something like QRdroid installed to scan. Then you install the g auth app on your phone (or should I say tablet?) and it wants to scan the qr code on the main screen. Done! It rotates codes quickly so you better have a quick mind to pick it up. :)

Now the problem is what do I call my Nexus 5x? A cell tab? Porty tab? Mini tab?

ps. the concept of a phone number is finally dying. Really, we are going from ipv4 to ipv6 because the numbers have run out, and that's orders of magnitude above phone numbers. Toronto has 2-3 area codes already. How many will we get up to? Google is ditching sms and people are mad. Grow up! :)

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Are you addicted to $10 cauliflower? Then economize in other areas. We used to live in a world where all communication came down special channels. There was the audio channel for the telephone, a satellite or cable channel for tv, and a FM channel for music. That's all gone now!

Just like consolidating your Canadian debts, everything can go down a data channel. You'll have two -- one wire channel, and one wireless. The bigger a pipe you can get, the less cost per bit.

I've abandoned the satellite, and now the landline phone. People say the landline is good in a power outage, but that's only a few milliamps, easily done by a UPS. My Internet will last for hours with a power outage, and with an ice storm you better have alternatives.

My latest is to give up the audio channel on the cell phone. I turned my phone into a data-only tablet. I never talk anyway, but it is easy to do a call through my home phone number using the ooma app. You can also use Google audio hangout (call). To turn your phone into a tablet, you have to make sure it's at least as good as a Nexus 5x, with LTE. Those other guys may have 'agreements'. The cartels hate this. Then you have to get through first level support by using threats, and voila!

ps. my new Nexus 5x has the usb-c charger so when I put it in my dashboard clamp, with the charger on, I navigate with Google play on, and it gets so hot it can defrost the windshield! Joking, but it is warm when I take it down. I'm giving up on gplay now because the radio stations repeat so much. Far better to stick to 'other' methods.

pps. I put this under my Linux header because clueless people should not do this. Stay on the channels and get fleeced. It's for the best. :) And also, the more people are fleeced, the longer my deal lasts.

My last article on Toronto seismicity is not a be-all and end-all theory of earthquakes, but rather a series of hypotheses that can be easily tested for a few bucks. The problem is that all the powers that control us are against it. I'm talking Big Oil, Big Nuclear, Big Government and all that. To be kind, they are not actively against it, they are ignoring it, like vw and diesels.

Nothing good could come to these guys if we resurrected Earth Sciences in Canada. Harper destroyed the federal science system which was the only outside third party that had the nerve to do what should be done. Perhaps the new guy can do it, but money has to be taken away from welfare projects. :) Not likely.

In this area, we are better off than the US, which does nothing for Eastern Seismicity. Of course, it will all change with a big Oklahoma earthquake, and all the insipid media will ask the question "Could it happen here?". A resounding yes on that.

One reason that the big powers have such a chokehold on us is fact the media has been dead a long time, but they haven't reported it yet. There's been no money for them to try and penetrate the 'PR wall' of the Powers. Now they are finally folding up their tents. Only social media is left "Trial by Youtube".

Only disasters can crack the facade of the big Powers. Until then, everything is okay.

**Whoops, this is depressing, and I must always force myself to cheer up. I have total faith that Papa Trudeau will fix this all up. That's my story, and I'm sticking with it. :)

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Lest we forget. Alaska just had an M7.1 that woke everybody up, but no damage. That's the trouble with preparing for earthquakes in this neck of the woods -- those in power say we're no Alaska or California, blah, blah. Problem is that a rare earthquake for them is an 8 or 9, for us it's a 6 or 7.

This is the latest seismicity map for Southern Ontario. The two lines mirror the two zones in Oklahoma, and show the famous 'Enid Gap'. These lines are the ancient Precambrian megathrusts, and are responsible for all the big seismicity in this area, including New Madrid. We imaged them clearly in Canada, but nobody in the US has made the effort.

So OK, New Madrid, and Toronto have the same mechanism, but the difference is the rate. (Sounds like an old joke). I'm just noting this, and I'm not going to engage in useless lip-flapping again.

** I have said before that Pickering has no hope with a 7. I had hoped it would die soon, but will extended forever. :(

ps. the vw saga, the Niagara Tunnel to Nowhere, Oklahoma, all show how you can successfully avoid basic physics. :)

pps. At the very least, people in the GTA should secure their knick-knacks with seismic wax. This just happened in Alaska.

Friday, January 22, 2016

"They shut down several major disposal facilities -- permanently," Thompson said, "The industry didn't collapse. The industry adjusted. The industry hauled its water somewhere else."

That, of course, is hilarious, since the 'somewhere else' is Oklahoma. But the Arkansas earthquakes taught me a lot. They followed the New Madrid sequence exactly with a thrust zone and then shear wings. OK is infinitely more complicated, with oblique faults as the starting point.

Had they not possessed such an easy out, they would have stuck to at least a 5 or 6. It's funny that after the first ban, they went to other areas, with the exact same effect.

There are safe ways to inject, but these don't have high volumes. The initial injection sites were Cambrian sandstone layers. These were wonderful, but you needed high pressure, and the pressure kept increasing the more you injected, just as it should. The first Precambrian wells were amazing, almost no pressure to inject, and with every earthquake, it became better. Who could resist this?

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

This is a big AP article and has been picked up by every outlet that has laid off their writers. :) I'm impressed that they got more sound bites. All these people want to have nothing to do with this, but they'll rattle off a quip or two.

Anyway, I think OK is on a winter retreat. The natural gas wells tend to freeze up when the cold weather hits, and there is less gas water to inject. This was a real issue for the last two cold winters, but who knows this year with old El Nino. My working hypothesis is that this gas water is the real culprit behind the earthquakes.

All my hypotheses are only good for directing studies and spending money. If there is no money, then I'm just piddling in the wind. They've stopped installing new seismometers, and the only uncalibrated accelerometers are in Cushing. This is what the lawyers should take note of, the utter disregard.

It is now the fashion in these articles for the pundits to talk out of two orifices. On the one hand they say there is little chance of a 'California Earthquake', but at the same time saying there could be a 7. If you read the history of the New Madrid earthquake sequence, you'll see that's 'California' enough!

ps. I am amazed how some papers don't even want to pay for the AP article. They have a student just produce a short summary under her own byline. This is truly news of the news. :)

Saturday, January 16, 2016

When I got heavily into the scene 30 years ago, all the nuclear money had dried up. I went to many conferences on eastern seismology, and it was sad. They were still running their networks, but seismometers were popping off like light bulbs on a cheap marquee. The nuclear people loved the emphasis on historic sites, because then they didn't have to think about earthquakes right under them.

Now, the current state is that all those people are dead (whatever). I'm the only one left, and I'm nearly dead. :) You saw with the Virginia earthquake, they had to parachute busgus people in, who didn't know anything. Nobody was there when Arkansas and Ohio lit up. And poor OK only had Austin.

The nuclear industry could give lessons to the frackers on how to beat up scientists. They are in a horrible state when it comes to seismicity. But we won't dwell on that. This is all about suing everybody and their dog.

A thank you note about the New Madrid monitoring. I visited this place and was impressed what seismic monitoring could do. It was beautiful and it gave me many ideas. I'll always have fond memories.

As hinted in the previous part, the two schools of seismology started differently, and are as different as apples and kumquats. All names are mungled up, to protect the innocent (me).

West

The shining star of seismology, the West got it's big start with the 1906 earthquake, and the gigantic report written by what would become the busgus. It is required reading for every budding earthquake person. 1906 left a big fault scar, and everything in the report is on mapping that. Also, off the top of their heads, and with no physics background whatsoever, they came up with the 'Elastic Rebound Theory', that the fault is the generator of the earthquake, like a rubber band.

This starting philosophy is ground into their bones. In fact, their motto is "Semper Stupidous", which is loosely translated as "Map every stupid little fault, for there be dragons". You couldn't get them out of this mode with a stick.

East

Make no mistake, the busgus is a totally western creature when is comes to earthquakes. Eastern seismology only came into it's own when they decided to put nuclear plants on every street corner. For a while, this school of thought was rolling in the dough. But they had a problem - no mappable faults. Out went the West. The other problem was that they had no earthquakes, so it became the property of historians.

Obviously, historians have a different bent than geologists. Both can't do math, but historians spend their time in dusty archives, and extract newspaper clippings. This was the state of the art when I first got into the biz forty years ago. Naturally, they had to focus on historic earthquakes, so now every speck of effort has gone into the historical zones, which will never have another earthquake. So sad.

This starts a new series of "Who ya goin' sue?". It provides a background for the countless attack lawyers who are descending on Oklahoma. They'll soon find out there's no money there, so they'll have to go after the big whales. This will be a whole new area of the law - "Wilful Ignorance". Previously, the pit bulls have gone after a 'smoking gun', in big companies that still had intelligence. Somewhere, some ignorant fool in Research wrote some warning that the big guys ignored, like cancer or gas tanks exploding. Big Money!

Now, however, every organisation and company has solved this problem by shooting those guys before they have a chance to speak out. The 'Stupidity Defence' reigns supreme. "Nobody told me about those diesel engines." Lawyers caused this, and now they'll have to kill their own children. They'll have to argue 'Societal Responsibility', and how you shouldn't listen to lawyers. You can eat the irony with a spoon.

East is East, West is West ... blah blah

In North American, the study of earthquakes is divided into two, west and east of the Rockies. There's not a speck of cross-over, and both started from completely philosophies. Make no mistake about, this is all 90% philosophy, and very little hard physics.

Nobody is going to step into this mess now. Anybody who admits studying any of this will be subpoenaed again and again and crucified in court. Even Austin will forget anything he knew! The busgus will run, saying they only monitored earthquakes because OK got out of it. Those commenters that the newspapers use will say they were just talking off the top of their heads, and didn't study it.

He'll make sure that nobody does any science ever again! The whole place will be like OK, wallowing in self-produced ignorance. This is good for Canadian lumber exports when they have to rebuild the entire Mid-west. :)

ps. Dear Carnivorous Lawyers. In a Federal case, I think it will be easiest to sue usgs. You can just list the things they failed to do, by international standards. They, in turn, will sue Congress for lack of funds. :)

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

I'm not railing against stupidity here. That always gets me manic or depressed so I try to keep away from that stuff. This is 'talk depression time' on the commercials, so we'll start with that a bit. I'm a hereditary intellectual depressive. There must be an evolutionary advantage to depression, or it wouldn't have lasted so long. It's a simple fact of synapse speed.

Intelligence is determined by synapse speed, and creativity by cross-connections. You would think evolution would have zapped these things up by now, but there is a downside. If you were making a Sim-Human (you're God or something), and dialled up synapse speed, there would be effects. Sure, Simmy would do well in his 20's programming or something, but he would be burning up Serotonin. As well, he is thinking so fast, he starts dwelling on depressing thoughts, like everybody is so stupid, and he kicks his TV a lot.

Simmy either becomes a lush, or kills himself, and not a big reproducer. If you or anybody you know is very bright and starts becoming moody in his 30's, please tell horrible family stories, and get him to a doctor. Serotonin can be boosted with a very simple pill. The evolutionary advantage came from having people in the village with brains, so they could invent tools and such. Who cares if they were nerds?

But I digress. As background on Darlington, I know a lot. I helped put in the foundations and tunnels. That was a heck of a lot of fun in my Serotonin burning days. We were expecting it to last 40 years before refurb, but there was a horrible design flaw. Pushing too much water down the fuel channels caused chaotic interactions, with the result being horrible vibrations. Something like earthquakes. These vibrations shattered everything in 20 years.

Without my pills, I would obsess about the stupidity in this refurb. But I'm not. Let everybody have their fun! Pour out the billions. Who knows, it could succeed. :)

ps. Anyway, it's good to do this in the recession. This creates lots of horrible jobs for middle-rank engineers, since it's all going out to consultant. Better than starving.

I am about to go out into the snow with the dog. This is the burden of our geographical location.

Forget all that! Now we plan "Oklahoma The Movie". We assume that OK will be hit by a full New Madrid sequence, three M7+'s. Somebody will make a movie. Now, the format.

Perhaps something like 'The Martian', with somebody stuck in Tulsa needing rescue. Or "Titanic" with hubris sinking the state. Myself, I like a remake of "Jaws". Of course, these days we need The Rock in a helicopter, but the flashback scenes will be best.

To make true villains, we need someone to blab about the backroom dealings of the USGS, the oil companies, and the OK governor. And I want to throw in Texas. Although I want Ryan Gosling to play me because he is Canadian, I think Brad Pitt looks more like me. :)

My part will have to beefed up. I don't want the truth -- a whiny Cassandra who is totally ineffectual, sitting in his basement. The backroom will have to say "We have to kill this guy". Neato. The crusading woman can be played by Julia Roberts. :)

ps. Tragically, Julia is killed by the OK State oil rig statue while pushing Matt away. The Rock arrives, and the audience is weeping because he loved her, but she had fallen in love with the Martian. It was Boromir in the USGS who committed mutiny and sent the Rock, who takes Matt out of OK. The evil oil guy, played by Jack N. will escape in his limo to go down and get El Chapo to escape again for the 10th time. This will be a hit!

Monday, January 11, 2016

My 'Earthquakes' collection has become so huge that people think it's a public thing, like the old Usenet Earthquakes group, or something on Facebook. All those groups died an ugly death, buried under porn spam and robo-trolls. The solution for this was classic 'Moderation' which always meant the death of a group, since the moderators were slow and fickle. Nobody could respond with any spontaneity or wit.

When Wikipedia started up, I wrote up all the earthquake and geology definitions. Then it got filled with heavy-handed editors that killed everything. Now, the articles are factory-produced by rote-loving college students using references that nobody can get. It is boringly average.

A g+ collection has the advantage of being a total fiefdom. If somebody is a pain, you don't have to constantly moderate out their inane ramblings, but you can totally kill them. Since everybody uses an assumed name, that's automatically 2 strikes, and Google turfs them out. Sure, they can come back under another phony name, but they're fighting Mr. Google now. I know that's a tough thing. :(

As the collection gets bigger and bigger, I'm swatting flies like crazy. I'm sure it will get to the point where the losers start calling their politicians, mail bombs, or sue me or something. Then I'll just close the whole thing. At least it will be a quick death.

I have a great joy in hearing from the young people who are getting into one of the million things that I write about. The worst thing about science and engineering right now is the chokehold by old guys. We know about the problem in academia with tenure, but this sort of thing is everywhere. Can you imagine what will happen if they come up with that magic pill that lets everybody live to 120?

Old guys like me should go into retirement, but there is no more compulsory retirement age. pooh. The consequences are that Science becomes more philosophical rather than 'hard'. The best work comes from people in the 20-40 age bracket, then they should go into management. :)

For earthquake science, the best way to force out the old guys is through a flood of hard data. With this, you can employ the razor edge of pure Scientific Method. Old guys hate that, since their power depends on never being proven wrong. Unfortunately, stupid people have all the money. Sucks.

That's why we need 'Uber for Science', or a sharing economy for hard-core science. Right now, the only thing I'm thinking of is a distribution of cheap accelerometers. If we have a 'learning' earthquake that is well instrumented, we can blow out a lot of bad assumptions, and make room for young people. Old guys will never go for this, so it has to be a popular movement.

Things that this will do:

-permanently kill 'peak acceleration' and replace it with peak ground velocity (PGV)
-kill standard modal seismic analysis, and replace it with finite differences.
-produce a window of opportunity to use rock mechanics for earthquakes

Unfortunately, this 'earthquake revolution' will be stillborn. The Evil Seismologist Cabal has control, and will spend all the money on stupid early warning. The Evil Engineering Cabal will spend all the money on stupid shake tables. The young people will have to go with this or starve.

But I must end on a hopeful note or I will get depressed. The next person who will win that 1 billion dollar lottery may like causing trouble in the scientific community. :)

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Here you can see the balkanization of US geology. All geology stops at the state boundaries. And here it is also stopping at the Paleozoic. There is some prohibition from looking at the Precambrian. In this case, it is not a 300 million year old mountain range, but a one billion year old thing. These are the giant megathrusts that go through the entire eastern half of the continent. Nevertheless, this is the first time I've read a glancing blow to the truth. :)

Texas just had an M3.8 in the middle of nowhere along this line. What a shock to them! I wonder how quickly they can squash this. Anyway, read the article, so I don't have to do more 'background' posts. :)

I regularly post this. It's the plot of the microwave readings from satellites. The basic idea is that the Earth is a radiating black body, like a stove element. The poor old planet has to get rid of a lot of heat, solar and geothermal. The fact that it has done so successfully for a billion years to maintain life, is somewhat heroic.

I used to think that this was the only accurate measurement of the Earth's temperature, but it isn't. It's a reading of how much the Earth is putting out. If we had a naked planet, then the two would be the same, but we have clouds. Our wet clouds are the perfect planetary insulator, since they stop atmospheric high convection. Only clear skies can convect the heat out far enough for black-body radiation.

I've also shown this a lot. It's a picture of our glorious wet clouds keeping in the heat. Right now we have the monstrous El Nino hot water spot in the middle, churning away. Normally, this hot water is locked away in the west Pacific islands, and can't do much. But El Nino is sending hot water to the clear skies, acting as the perfect radiator for our Earth. In fact, the ocean currents are our main heat pipe. If the continents are fully separated, we get 'Snowball Earth', because all the heat is going out. We're heading to that right now.

Thursday, January 7, 2016

I had dreams of Obama rushing in with the army and shutting down all injection. That would put Kansas and OK on the fed payroll as welfare states, like Guam. Everybody would be happy. Obama would insist that they turn in their assault rifles for food stamps. :)

At some point, near the beginning, this would have stopped the march to M7's or 8's. There would be no New Madrid II, and St. Louis would not be flattened. Now I am declaring that the giant snowball is rolling down the hill, getting bigger all the time and nothing can stop it.

I am impressed with the total lawlessness (Wild West) of the drilling in those places. They allow the boreholes to be abandoned fully open. In more civilized places, you are forced to grout the hole, so the cows don't fall in. If, by some miracle, they stopped injection, these holes would naturally inject sufficient surface water.

So now we discuss post-apocalyptic strategies. The big earthquakes would relieve all the stress, thus ensuring no more earthquakes in that part of the world. Until, of course, Nebraska starts injecting. Most likely there will be an over-reaction to stop all injection. That would be a pity, since if they injected with Fish-treated water, it would be safe.

Today, we had the largest earthquake of this mechanism, tomorrow (or a few days) there will be a larger one. This is just something to watch with horror, like a video of a plane coming down. Sad.

I sort of did predict this, since the Stillwater train track (fault) was blocked. Strain energy is like water, it has to flow somewhere. Anyway, since this was at the butt end of the northern fault, it was a mixed normal earthquake. That's means that somewhere else it was recorded as an M5.8, but it only gave wussy ground motions in OK. The next earthquake up the fault will be pure strike-slip, and then we'll see some PGV. Too bad my Happy Happy Shake Meter is still on the drawing board. :)

If the earthquake express train goes right up the fault, then this will provide a way around the Stillwater blockage, and we'll get some strain down to Cushing.

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Shattered quietly in the oven while cooking fish. Such lovely fracture patterns, like some minerals. Only two years old, since I dropped its predecessor on the patio. That thin Corningware is so useful, that I'll just buy another one. :)

ps. somebody please tell me if I can sue for pain and suffering. :)

ps2. just figured out they don't sell that simplylight line any more. darn.

Monday, January 4, 2016

Yeah, I'm reading a 2g accelerometer! This is with my Christmas toy, a Raspberry Pi-2. Right now, it's an ADXL345 accelerometer, but I've got some others. Now I have to dip into seismic software, mainly an accelerometer program with integration. I know they are out there. Next step will be to I2C chain a bunch of them together to get the thermal noise down. Should be able to detect the dog sneaking down to her food! :)

Sunday, January 3, 2016

Every day another 5,000 join my Earthquakes collection (not quite). They are from all over the world and barely speak English. But they are totally puzzled by Oklahoma, and once in a while I do a summary.

Here's where it now stands, on the verge of another big earthquake today or tomorrow. You can find this all by reading endless amounts of my previous posts. -- Ha!

It all starts with our North American plate under tremendous NE horizontal stress. It is slowly being squeezed by plate margins, but most likely the stress comes from sinking into a cold zone (press your thumb on a beachball). Nobody disputes this.

Now, unlike California, nothing ever happens here, so the stress is at the limit state, ie. just a little bit more and you have an earthquake. The last exciting thing was the glacial advance. All this stress is carried in the Precambrian basement, right down to the Moho (bottom of the crust). We Canadians have imaged it, but the Americans are afraid of it. They only know Paleozoic geology. They have every right to fear it (just like the Bruce Black Hole), but it is a sleeping tiger.

Every once in a while, somebody tweaks the tail of the tiger. This is done by sending surface water (from rain) down deep. This has been done naturally over the millenia, mainly by the ice sheets and their leftovers. One major leftover, was the current course of the Mississippi River.

That happened to lie right over a significant PreC structure, which I have dubbed a megathrust. We can see them clearly on Canadian imaging, but the busgus puts all their money into Callie. Over the thousands of years, water seeped into the deep crust and started a growth process of stress relief, ending in the monster earthquakes of 1811. These were so huge that if they came again, they would destroy the entire Midwest. Now, it's funny that they are all poo-poo about it rising again, and they used that to get money, but this is a dead parrot.

Now we get to OK and the raising of the next New Madrid earthquake sequence. I first got into this when they tried it in Ohio and Arkansas, but quickly stopped when they hit M4's. OK has got well beyond that.

It's cute that they've been injecting deep salt water for a long time. But they never had the current volumes. If you just inject into the Cambrian sandstones then nothing happens, but it only takes dribbles. For real volume, you have to directly inject into the PreC open fractures. Infinite volume! Infinite rate.

It starts with one hole into the megathrust, perhaps through the open limestone above. Let's say this was the Prague structure, line D. It very quickly escalated into an M5.6 and they shut it down -- Oops!

Up to the next structure, line A. How do they find these? They know what's down there. Otherwise you drill into tight rock, and not a speck of injection.

Happy injecting with deep water, saturated in silica. It's not aggressive to the quartz holding the faults together. It's all open so there is no pressure. La, la la! Money, money. But fracking has started in volume and we can inject surface water. First earthquake. It opens the rock more. Money, money.

Everybody and their dog jump into this money pond. Fault A is slipping in an oblique manner. It can't really slip too much without putting pressure on the end points, so Fault C starts compression. Every thrust fault here allows A to slip more. This is exactly the mechanism at New Madrid with a central thrust, and two shear wings.

It goes on, and time to start Line B. It doesn't have a thrust fault yet, but is crumpling with longitudinal cracks (normal faults) at the ends.

Line B has a big paroxysm in December, and puts strain on Line A which is now in paroxysm. Thrust fault C can put some good motion on OK City.

Saturday, January 2, 2016

A lovely happy scene in front of a horrible brick monstrosity. What are the chances of death? Are they any more than anything else that tries to kill you? I would draw the line at 10%, that is, if something is less than 10% of daily activities, such as driving to the cottage, then forget it.

I don't know why people accept the bland assurances of officials. Based on what? But we accept things without physics all the time, and I've said that physics is on a downhill run.

I was asked to look at a particular fault in the Philippines, to see if it presented any danger to that person. Forget that concept! That is a stupid California concept, that you can tell something by reading the tea leaves of criss-crossing faults. Just accept the fact that the whole thing is a mess. In those areas, and in fact, in most areas of the world, your chances of death are dominated by foundation and construction.

Foundations can amplify the PGV by 10 to 100 times. That totally wipes out any variation by location. There is a similar factor of 10 to 100 in the seismic capacity of structures. Again, forget individual faults, that's just a feather-bed for the California Seismologist Evil Cabal. :)

The seismic capacity to death is very low for adobe houses with heavy clay roofs, perhaps 10 cm/s or less. A standard frame house has something like 1-2 m/s capacity before death, depending on the roof and chimney. In between are brick monstrosities, and 70's pre-stressed concrete buildings.

We need a cloud of accelerometers to give a more accurate picture of the chances of death. If that school would have had a PGV ten times lower than the average, then we know it is on rock, and will never be damaged. If it would be 10 times more, then shut it down! This is physics, and something that will never happen.

Friday, January 1, 2016

This isn't a standard bank tower problem, it's a soft-storey condo problem. At the discontinuity, there will be high shear stress when an earthquake conducts its dynamic fling. Everybody will be on the deck, with their bbq's and piles of litter. Then the fire starts right under a balcony. Mr. and Mrs. Smith have loaded it with decorations, plastic cats, and a propane tank. Luckily, the propane tank is safe, and shoots flame straight up, not exploding. Mr. Jones, however, keeps his entire Star Wars collection on the balcony above, including his Storm Trooper outfits.

People can evacuate, but in an earthquake, all the glass starts falling out, causing fires in the condos, hopefully put out by the interior sprinkler system. Forget the fire department, because every other condo is a torch.

In your standard office tower, you can look on the city with horror. Do not evacuate!

Last year was not good for intelligence. It continued a trend for business and government that has been going on for a while now. There is a great force driving 'cocooning in stupidity', or wallowing in ignorance, which is a great comfort for most people. In today's legal climate, only the stupid survive. Look at Martha S. Nobody could be convinced she was stupid and that landed her in jail.

VW -- The ultimate mass stupidity. Thousands knew, and yet the management attitude was "I don't want to hear about it.". Now they are conducting a witch hunt for smart people, and only the stupid will be left.

Oklahoma -- I consider OK to be the trial state for Trumpism. They destroyed education with mindless old biblical shit, and drove out all the smart teachers. They went on to drive out every single scientist (with brains). Then the politicians (realizing where this was going) competed to be the most stupid. However, you can't say the people were stupid to achieve this perfect state of bliss, they knew what they were doing.

Ontario, Canada -- Perhaps not the worst in the world, but I am familiar with it. The government went on a huge round of stupidity, and was rewarded for it. Everybody used the 'Stupidity Defence' (I didn't know they wiped out all the records). Their 'quasi-government' corporations went on a stupidity binge, putting nuclear waste into the worst rock in the world, building a Niagara Tunnel to nowhere, and refurbishing a nuclear plant without a valid seismic basis.

The examples are endless - the USGS, climate change, etc. We old men shouldn't dwell on this too much, it makes us angry. There is one common theme - it all ends in tears. As leaders become more and more stupid, in order to defend themselves, there are more disasters. Either financial, or physical. The smart people are scapegoats, the stupid are happy.

When I am in a hopeful mood, I realize this is self-correcting. NASA went on a stupidity binge with the shuttle, and then they smartened up. They've been starving to death the last few years, and now Congress has given them a hunk of money and an impossible target. They will now have to reach deep into stupidity, because there just isn't the talent any more. It's been all starved out. It's sad that all the brains of the world are now in Palo Alto, inventing uber versions of everything. A single earthquake will wipe them out.